Watch People Watching
Shaw Kaake thinks that people entranced by hand-held games and video players tend to ignore the world around them. His response was to develop the Egokast, a palm-size video player that doubles as a belt buckle. Instead of watching the Egokast screen, the wearer watches other people's reactions to it. "This is the first media device that you don't watch, but everybody else does," says Kaake, an American designer living in Shanghai. "Instead of staring into your BlackBerry, you're looking at the reactions of people to the content." The Egokast, which sells for $289, includes a memory card and a disc with hundreds of prefabricated video loops. Users can also make their own content. Kaake does see one issue: "Some people might be a little uncomfortable with everyone looking at their belt."

Don't Call Them 'Flipper'
Researchers have discovered that dolphins have "names"not words, but distinctive whistles that contain identifying information. Scientists have known since the 1960s that dolphins make whistles or calls. "It's always been suggested that they are important for staying in touch with each other," says Vincent M. Janik of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The question was whether the whistles had unique identifying information or whether the dolphins were simply responding to the tone or some other feature of the sound. Janik found that when dolphins in a group were exposed to an artificial whistle modeled after that of a related group member, they turned toward the sound. The sound pattern was the "language," and the dolphins recognized it despite the artificial nature of the "voice."